Elle Magazine's Kim and Kanye stunt backfires spectacularly

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian attend the Kanye West Yeezy Season 4 fashion show. Photo / Getty

US magazine Elle is facing a fierce social media backlash after tweeting out a non-existent story announcing that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have broken up.

The mag issued a tweet stating that "Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are splitting up," complete with a picture of the couple, shocked emojis and a link — presumably, to read the full story.

Once interested readers click on the link, they are instead taken to a website to register to vote ahead of the US midterm elections on November 6.

Get it? "We tricked you into clicking using your interest in celebrities, now here's something more worthy we know you never would've clicked on."

The stunt — the very definition of the oft-misused term 'clickbait' — seemed to suggest Elle has a pretty dim view of its largely female readership. The reaction online was swift and brutal:

Because we’re already smart enough to participate in it, and don’t need a pandering click-bait headline to “trick” us into it.

— AC (@amber_lcarter) October 18, 2018

We didn’t think there was a wrong way to encourage people to vote, but ELLE Magazine found ithttps://t.co/OyoDouuWbi pic.twitter.com/nLL5wZgoaW

— The Mary Sue (@TheMarySue) October 18, 2018

And it's not even an original stunt: Elle tweeted it six days after writer Ashlee Marie Preston had done the same thing, announcing a Kim and Kanye divorce with a link to vote. Her tweet has been retweeted more than 60,000 times:

Welp...it’s official...Kim Kardashian finally decided to divorce Kanye West... https://t.co/C2p25mxWJO

— Ashlee Marie Preston (@AshleeMPreston) October 12, 2018

Elle have now apologised for the "bad joke" …

We made a bad joke. Our passion for voter registration clouded our judgement and we are sincerely sorry. https://t.co/cYGGrpfBCz

— ELLE Magazine (US) (@ELLEmagazine) October 18, 2018

… and as far as we know, Kim and Kanye are still together.